Hi! Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your thought process so clearly! I am also quite happy to see discussions on PIBBSS’ mission and place in the alignment ecosystem, as we have been rethinking PIBBSS outbound comms since the introduction of the board and executive team.
Regarding the application selection process:
Currently (scroll down to see stages 1-4), it comes down to having a group of people who understand PIBBSS (in addition to the Board, this would be alumni, mentors, and people who have worked with PIBBSS extensively before) looking through CVs, Letters of motivation, and later work trials in the form of research proposals and research consolidation. After that, we do interviews and mentor-matching and then make our final decision. This has so far worked for our scope (as we grew in popularity, we also raised our bar, so the number of people passing the first selection stage has stayed the same through the past two years). So, it works, but if we were to scale the Fellowship (not obvious if we would like to do so) this system would need to become more robust. For Affiliates, the selection process is different, focusing much more on a proven track record of excellent research, and due to very few positions we can offer, it is currently a combination of word-of-mouth recommendations, and very limited public rounds. This connects with the project we started internally, “Horizon Scanning”, which makes reports on different research agendas and finds interesting researchers in the field which may make for great Affiliates. The first report should be out in the next month, so we will see how this interacts and how useful the reports are to the community (and to the fields which we hope to bridge with AI Safety). Again, as we scale, this will require rethinking.
Thank you again for the write-up and your support! Huge thanks also to all the commenters here; we really appreciate the thoughtful discussion!
Hi! Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your thought process so clearly! I am also quite happy to see discussions on PIBBSS’ mission and place in the alignment ecosystem, as we have been rethinking PIBBSS outbound comms since the introduction of the board and executive team.
Regarding the application selection process:
Currently (scroll down to see stages 1-4), it comes down to having a group of people who understand PIBBSS (in addition to the Board, this would be alumni, mentors, and people who have worked with PIBBSS extensively before) looking through CVs, Letters of motivation, and later work trials in the form of research proposals and research consolidation. After that, we do interviews and mentor-matching and then make our final decision. This has so far worked for our scope (as we grew in popularity, we also raised our bar, so the number of people passing the first selection stage has stayed the same through the past two years). So, it works, but if we were to scale the Fellowship (not obvious if we would like to do so) this system would need to become more robust. For Affiliates, the selection process is different, focusing much more on a proven track record of excellent research, and due to very few positions we can offer, it is currently a combination of word-of-mouth recommendations, and very limited public rounds. This connects with the project we started internally, “Horizon Scanning”, which makes reports on different research agendas and finds interesting researchers in the field which may make for great Affiliates. The first report should be out in the next month, so we will see how this interacts and how useful the reports are to the community (and to the fields which we hope to bridge with AI Safety). Again, as we scale, this will require rethinking.
Thank you again for the write-up and your support! Huge thanks also to all the commenters here; we really appreciate the thoughtful discussion!